The tie-in comic set in the J.J.-verse was said to be a prequel. Gary Mitchell was in it along with the Galileo 6. Gary Mitchell died.

So if it is Mitchell, it's Mitchell risen from the dead, making the movie a sequel to a J.J.-verse version of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" rather than a remake of it.

But my gut says this is a new guy, probably Section 31, who managed to replicate and further enhance what happened to Charlie X and Gary Mitchell and that both will be referenced as people who Starfleet studied and who S31 used as a template for a new godlike kind of human super-weapon.

And that this will be a new story but maybe with nods to Gary Mitchell, Charlie X, Trelane, Apollo, and even a Q, perhaps all of whom have been subjected to Section 31 analysis and/or autopsies. Maybe Khan as well and maybe the alien from Star Trek V.

Just playing a hunch but I think we'll see a morgue full of alien godlike figures who Section 31 has been dissecting and studying.

Orci and Kurtzman do a LOT of research (for example, the admirals seen in ST 2009 were all established admirals) but they will shove that research into places where you'd miss it if you blinked, practically. And I foresee a moment here where we'll see shoutouts to all the enhanced humans and alien gods from Trek. But that's it. It will all be background for a new guy, who's engineered based on them. It will be a line of dialogue, Trelane's shirt on a skeleton, a dead body in a coffin marked "Subject: Q," that kind of thing.

In fact, I can already foresee a fan chat where an upset fan asks them, "Why did you kill Q?" And Orci will shoot back something like, "We killed *A* Q. We never said which one."